Close approach of Mars and M22

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Appulses feed

Tags: Appulse

Objects: M22 Mars

Mars and M22 will make a close approach, passing within a mere 22.9 arcminutes of each other.

From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 17° above the horizon at dawn.

Mars will be at mag 0.9; and M22 will be at mag 5.2. Both objects will lie in the constellation Sagittarius.

They will be close enough to fit within the field of view of a telescope, but will also be visible through a pair of binoculars.

A graph of the angular separation between Mars and M22 around the time of closest approach is available here.

The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
Mars 18h36m20s 23°31'S Sagittarius 0.9 6"2
M22 18h36m20s 23°54'S Sagittarius 5.2 0"0

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 71° from the Sun, which is in Aquarius at this time of year.

The sky on 11 Mar 2035

The sky on 11 March 2035
Sunrise
07:01
Sunset
18:44
Twilight ends
20:18
Twilight begins
05:27


Waxing Crescent

4%

2 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 06:26 11:39 16:52
Venus 05:29 10:27 15:26
Moon 08:00 14:20 20:49
Mars 03:35 08:05 12:35
Jupiter 08:09 14:34 20:59
Saturn 14:02 21:28 04:53
All times shown in EDT.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Image credit

The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.

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